Sunday 26 August 2012 12.59 EDT
First published on Sunday 26 August 2012 12.59 EDT

Now that the Murdochs are out of the way, it is Scotland that represents the biggest existential threat to the BBC. The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 may be only of occasional interest to London's chattering classes – but the view at White City is somewhat more focused. BBC executives are only too aware of the potential implications if Scotland were to become sovereign in matters of television.

Alex Salmond, speaking on this subject at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television festival last week, is clearer still. He wants to break up the BBC, should Scotland become independent. The northern nation accounts for 9% of UK households. A total separation from the BBC would see the corporation lose £320m or £340m from its £3.5bn annual licence fee income. It is of course a meaningful sum of money, but specific Scottish services already cost about £100m although cuts will take that closer to £80m. Even so, with Scottish costs removed, the BBC in London would have to replace a little over half the annual content spend on BBC2.

But this is a sum of money the BBC could live without if it had to. It is hard to believe that BBC shows wouldn't air in Scotland in some form, with a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation paying for the rights, which will help to close the funding gap.

It is harder still to see what an SBC might produce on £340m a year, in a business where size matters (ask Hollywood for further details). Given that top-end budgets can be as much as £750,000 an episode, one hour of quality drama a week could cost a 10th of the entire budget.

As for the first minister, he wants to keep details light. There will be a paper next year on how television will operate in an independent Scotland, but the bottom line is that it is not clear how a broadcaster operating on a third of a billion will fare. Of course, the SBC will buy EastEnders – as popular in Scotland as it is in London – but what about BBC4, or 5 Live? Viewers will probably have to pay for the digital channels via Sky; as for radio, well, that's a bit easier, or as Salmond put it, there will be "over-spill" – terrestrial signals from England that people can tune into without paying.

Realistically then, an SBC would at best look like a mixed country channel: imports dominate TV channels in many smaller European countries. It will have some popular BBC shows, but far from all. There may be more US imports, too. But Salmond hasn't got where he is without being a plausible optimist.

He points to Denmark, home to The Killing and Borgen. The small country, with a 5.6 million population not dissimilar to Scotland's 5.2 million, provides an enviable way forward for Scottish television. But success is not easily achieved. The Danish licence fee is higher, at £230 (mostly funding the broadcaster DR) v £145.50 a year in the UK.

The budget for drama is £20m – so there is little room for flops – but the genre only commands 4% of schedules; other programming, often imported, has to fill the gaps. And this, remember, is a country whose television is deemed to be a success. Creative success is not a given.

To have a chance to compete globally, the Danish experience suggests Scottish viewers may have to pay more. But there are other ways of raising funds. At the session in Edinburgh, Salmond hinted that he would be open to an SBC carrying advertising to supplement licence-fee funding. In Ireland, RTE carries ads, and that could boost budgets to closer to the £525m BBC2 boasts. That would be a decision for an independent Scotland of course, but it would also be a different kind of public television.